Two Quick Movie Notes

Recently Corrie and I watched a pair of movies, and and I felt compelled to write a few words.

1) Holy shit! The first movie we watched was The Expendables, from streaming Netflix.I was compelled to sit through it after talking with Tony and then reading somethings about the sequel. If all you want to see is an orgy of violence and corny one-liners, this one's for you. I'm almost tempted to go see the sequel, which is something else for me, a guy who counts On the Waterfront and Chinatown as two of my five favorite movies.

I only wanted to day two things about this movie. The first: the dive-bombing, machine-gunning, fuel-dumping, flare-shooting action sequence is about as cheer-worthy a scene as I've ever witnessed in big action movies. Hell yes. The second: when did the AA-12 come into existence? Nobody told me that Terry Crews, the same guy playing Chris Rock's dad in "Everybody Hates Chris", carries around and rules the day with the craziest gun ever made. And I thought the tommy-gun was sweet--that only fires .45 magnum rounds. This thing is an automatic shotgun. Here's a link to Crews in action

2) We also watched Wing Chun. When we noticed that it starred a young Michelle Yeoh, we decided to try it out. The movie was directed by Wing Po, who is the martial arts coordinator in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Matrix, and although he was mostly unused, Kill Bill Vol. 1.

Wing Chun is a lady warrior who ran off and learned kung fu instead of marrying her betrothed. She was condemned to live the life of a roving fighter/warrior, and won't be able to wed. She is played by Michelle Yeoh.

Michelle Yeoh played Lu Shien, the older lady warrior in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Chow Yun-fat played the retiring swordsman, Li Mu-bai, who's giving up the life because he's in love with Lu Shien, and the Zhang Ziyi plays the young girl trying to avoid marriage by becoming a warrior.

That's a lot of background from Crouching Tiger..., but I state it because Wing Chun is, for all intents and purposes, a direct prequel to that movie. Michelle Yeoh plays basically the same character in both, just at different stages of life.

I remember having a long conversation with someone (Murphy, RIP) about how Lu Shien is probably the most bad-ass warrior in the whole movie, and in Wing Chun, Yeoh is easily the most bad-ass character in the movie. Easily and by far.

Zhang Ziyi plays a girl that tries to live the life that Wing Chun lived, follow the path blazed by Chun. If you like Crouching Tiger..., check out Wing Chun if you come across it. Seriously, you could watch them back to back, Wing Chun first, then Crouching Tiger..., and it could flow seamlessly.